Heavy February snow is great if you want to ski at Passo di Lanciano and La Majelletta – but not so great when it blankets the building site of our Abruzzo property.

All through winter in this part of Abruzzo, the weather had been unusually mild. Only a couple of dips below freezing and not so much as a snowflake.

But on Thursday lunchtime, just as the guys from Tropicale Piscine were making a start to the swimming pool framework, it started snowing. And it's been snowing pretty well ever since.

Gamely, the pool guys slogged on through the worst of it and had the pool basics finished by Friday afternoon.

But the landscaping work we've begun ground to a halt. Can't lay out the paths and the planting areas if they keep disappearing under snow…

But while our Abruzzo property was being gently blanketed, the Majella was getting its first truly serious snows of the winter.

You've been able to to ski La Majelletta pretty much since late November – but a little lower down, Passo de Lanciano skiing has been patchy at best. Not so now however. All runs are open and the chairlift's working overtime !

Hopefully, the show will have been just a temporary glitch. Any Abruzzo property project has a few days lost to the weather built into the schedule – and we've been lucky so far. Our May 2 opening date is still on schedule !

This week, installing the underfloor heating starts in to our house and I have to order the aircon units. Seems strange thinking about soaring temperatures when it's around 2?C outside, but for this very reason February's a good time to buy aircon ! And sunbeds and umbrellas. (Except we already bought these in December. Another peak month for making summer-related purchases…)

And I have to buy a few trees. It's too wet – and cold – to plant these now, but I need to plan, choose and buy a few 'instant impact' plants  sometime in March.

Abruzzo gardening is a brand-new challenge. I have to unlearn 25-odd years of UK gardening experience – or rather try and find which bits of that experience I can use in Abruzzo gardening.

This gorgeous Nandina Domestica 'Firepower' never turned such a spectacular colour in the UK. But then again, it never had to cope with the weather we've had over the past few days. It's survived fine. As indeed has pretty much everything else I dug out of our former UK garden, stuck in pots, and bought with us.

Some will prosper once they've been stuck in the garden, given a drink and left to fend for themselves. As for others, I fear for their long-term prospects…

Click here for more info about skiing Passo de Lanciano and La  Majellett.

This entry was posted on Monday, February 16th, 2009 at 10:20 pm and is filed under About Abruzzo, About Villas for 2, Daily Life, Property. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.